Tabla de contenidos para Issue 1 - 2020 en Cycle World

Little children staring out the windows of the family car amuse themselves by learning to recognize the makes, models, and years of passing cars. My youngest son, when he was quite small, would look at an illustration in a book and ask, “What’s that little guy doin’ up there?” And we’d look, and at first see only the dragon and St. George (or other center of interest), but after some searching we’d see, off in an upper corner of the frame, a tiny bird sitting in a tree. Why did he fasten on that detail? The motorcycle shop I frequented in my 20s belonged to an older man, Mack McConney (were he still living, he’d be 123 now). I learned that favored customers might be invited to join him on…

The first switch to find its way onto a motorcycle was the ignition system’s mechanical contact breaker. Send current into a primary coil to create a magnetic field, then suddenly stop that current. The magnetic field collapses, inducing a high-voltage into a secondary coil of many turns of fine copper wire wound over the primary. Connect that secondary across a sparkplug gap, and you have a source of timed ignition for an internal combustion engine. How do we stop the current at the right time? Place a cam on the engine’s crankshaft or camshaft, arranged so that the cam bumps open a pair of switch contacts just before the piston reaches top dead center. Racers and others needed a reliable means of stopping a running engine, and the result…

The full-face helmet is only about 50 years old. And not to be too obvious, but before that, not one person ever used one on a motorcycle. Today many riders wouldn’t ride with anything less. Could wearable air bag protection in your riding jacket or race suit become the safety standard in the same way? Leading gear companies Dainese and Alpinestars have been working over the course of the past two decades to make it so, and motorcyclists have enjoyed the fruit of this rivalry that has created the most technologically advanced safety standard to date. The race in earnest began in 1995, when Dainese initiated developmental work on its air bag system—later named D-Air. Alpinestars arrived at the party in 2001 with its Tech-Air project. Work for both companies…

Perhaps it was somehow appropriate that as I tried this morning to ride my 1974 Norton 850 Commando to work, it failed to start. I’d stopped in the middle of some maintenance work and left it on my lift far too long. So even though I’d drained the carburetor float bowls and added fuel stabilizer to the tank, the jets were clogged and the engine would only reluctantly pop, then die. I’d finished a few maintenance items right around the time the news broke about Norton’s current owner, Stuart Garner, being in hot water in England for misusing pension funds to help keep his faltering motorcycle brand alive. Now, some weeks later, the full story regarding allegations of fraud, “loans” made from Norton to Garner being “forgiven,” and other misuses…

The first motorcycles had no formal suspension, front or rear. Suspension allows the wheel to independently move up and down over bumps, supporting the chassis and rider through a spring or other elastic element without transmitting all its motions to the chassis. Front suspension came first out of necessity—to prevent larger bumps from wrenching the bars out of the rider’s hands. The rear wheel, passively following the front, could get by as on any bicycle—by being rigidly attached to the frame. Because rigid frames give a hard ride, two solutions beckoned. One was easy: to support the rider’s seat on springs. The other—to free the rear wheel to move up and down over bumps—proved difficult. Many rear-suspension schemes were tried, but as the bicycle’s original “diamond” frame was already too…

It’s a magical, almost surreal feeling to slipstream three-time world champion and grand prix icon Freddie Spencer aboard the 2020 CBR1000RR-R Fireblade SP, the long-awaited redesign of Honda’s open-class superbike. But while tucked behind the bubble and letting the powerful inline-four rip toward redline across Losail International Circuit’s front straightaway in top gear, it somehow feels just right. Honda’s history is deeply rooted in racing, and this bike exemplifies what the company has learned through years of handcrafting works machines. Sure, Big Red has created countless millions of more-utilitarian motorcycles over the decades because that’s what pays the bills. But Honda has never lost a sense of what it is: a company that has tirelessly tested itself and its technology in racing from the very beginning. That is what makes…

When a stunning new model appears, wouldn’t you like to know how it came to be? Honda’s new 2020 Fireblade CBR1000RR-R is my current example. Why did Honda launch this 214 hp bike, with MotoGP’s racy 81.0 x 48.5mm bore and stroke, in a time when sales of big sportbikes have shrunk so much? Thinking about this, Honda Racing Corporation, HRC, seemed to be a key. Its red, blue, and black logo has emblazoned a great many high-technology championship-winning bikes, on- and off-road, whose technology has then been shared with the rest of us in production machines. What is HRC’s role in the new Fireblade? How does its work influence production motorcycles? Fireblade is clearly aimed at winning in World Super-bike, where Honda has needed stronger performance for some time.…

At the end of 2018, rumors began to swirl that Triumph Motorcycles was working on a new Rocket 3, the company’s biggest and most powerful motorcycle. This caught the attention of 11-time motorcycle drag racing champion Rickey Gadson. He knew about the first-generation Rocket 3: a 2,294cc, 765-pound hunk of British steel that boasted nearly 150 horsepower and 163 pound-feet of torque. He had ridden drag racing and land-speed builder Bob Carpenter’s modified “Silverback” Rocket 3, going deep into 8-second E.T.s at over 150 mph. What would this new, more-powerful, and lighter Rocket 3 be capable of in stock form? We wondered as well, so we made the call to the legendary drag racer. We also wanted to understand Gadson’s tuning and riding technique as he searched for his best…